Precious metals resumed their slow descent during the week after they had rallied in the previous week. Despite the hopes of many that Bernanke will hint of stimulus plan in the near future, he didn’t comply and in his testimonies at the Hill he didn’t offer any information about the future steps of the FOMC. During the week there were several U.S reports that presented a mixed signal as to the economic progress of the U.S: U.S housing starts rose during June, while existing home sales declined by 5.4%; Philly Fed index remained negative but slightly rose, while retail sales edged down. Other U.S related news and reports include: jobless claims rose to 386k; U.S CPI remained flat while core CPI rose by 0.2%.
Finally, during the week the Euro/USD edged down and may have curbed the rally of major commodities rates including gold, silver and oil.
By the end of the week, gold rose by 0.83% and silver by 1.67%.
Here is a short recap of the changes in Bullion between July 16th and July 20th:
Precious Metals Recap:
Gold price edged down during last week by 0.58%; further, during said time the average rate reached $1,583.02 /t. oz which is 0.17% above the previous week’s average rate of $1,580.38 /t. oz. Gold finished at $1,582.8 /t. oz.
Silver, much like gold, edged down on a weekly scale by 0.24%; on the other hand, the average rate reached $27.25/t oz which is 0.27% above the previous week’s average $27.18/t oz.
During last week, the average daily percent change of gold reached -0.11%; silver also declined by an average 0.05%.
The chart below presents the developments of precious metals, as their rates were normalized to 100 to July 13th. Bullion prices didn’t do much during the week and declined during the first half of the week; by the last couple of days, bullion rates edged up.
The second chart presents the daily percent shifts of precious metals (or in other words the changes around the trend). Bullion prices moved with very low increments during the week. Precious metals daily percent changes ranged during the week between nearly 0.5% gain and 1.2% loss.
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